


i have a bomb between my teeth (it's painted red with your name)

by opheliahyde



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: 5 Times, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Forced Sex Work, Implied/Referenced Sexual Abuse, Kissing, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3445274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliahyde/pseuds/opheliahyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five first kisses Santanico Pandemonium had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i have a bomb between my teeth (it's painted red with your name)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [siddals](https://archiveofourown.org/users/siddals/gifts).



> Title taken from [this poem](http://poetriaa.tumblr.com/post/84144937033/we-werent-fire-just-smoke-i-have-a-bomb).
> 
> Lots of kisses to my darling [scorpiod](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod) for her quick and dirty beta. All remaining mistakes are my own.

**i.**

Carlos kisses her feet before he kisses her lips.

They let her keep him as long as he was willing to serve and serve he does—Santanico grows to like the taste of _conquistador_ , of soldiers with their blood up and greedy for gold, listening to tales Carlos had spun them as they lead them to their deaths. Carlos draws her baths for her just as he feeds her, works to boil enough water so it’s warm when she sinks in, watching him as he keeps his eyes averted, looking at her instead of her body. He washes her with careful precision, eyes only on the task at hand, tries to maintain her modesty, tries to offer her respect.

The kiss was stolen, lips warm against the heel of her foot and gone in a breath—as if it hadn’t happened, but Santanico remembers the feeling.

Her hands come next, his lips brushed over the tops of her knuckles when he helps her from the bath, a kiss in the middle of her palm as they lay down to sleep, one for each fingertip.

But never her mouth.

His eyes drift there, his gaze its own graze that leaves her wanting, shuddering back and forth between skin and scales, but he waits, asking for something he hasn’t the tongue to ask.

Santanico kisses him as quick as she bit him, arching up with her feet and her hand curled around the base of his neck, pressing his mouth to hers—she has a collection of things stolen from Carlos and she adds another, with her tongue and teeth, mouth open like she might swallow him whole.

 

 

 

 

 

**ii.**

Camila is the first to join her after the saloon disappears in favor of what it becomes—it was Narciso’s idea to knock her down another peg, steal her corsets for more bare skin, make her dance for her supper as if they didn’t already pass her around and laugh when she held up her head and kept her shoulders back, walking like she _was_ instead of what they made her.

Carlos turned her, just as he turns the others—or brings them to her, the pair of them building their own resistance, culebras loyal only to them because of what they have offered and what they then owe. “Rescued her,” he says, laying a hand on Camila’s thin shoulder that quakes and shivers under a thinner dress, “ _they_ left her half-dead in a gutter, it was a mess and I didn’t think it would work, but she clung on, dragged herself out of it.”

Santanico smiles, careful to keep it soft though her teeth are grinding, jaw tense at the report. She reaches out and tucks a strand of Camila’s long, dark hair behind her ear. She runs her fingers under Camila’s jaw, stopping at her chin and tilting her eyes to Santanico’s--they’re brown and bold, a defiant gleam that makes Santanico think Carlos had chosen well. “You’re safe,” she says, stroking her thumb over Camila’s lips, her smiling loosening when her lips part and the shaking ceases. “No need to fear. _Eres una guerrera_ , but there's no need to fight right now. I'm here to look after you.”

Santanico presses her mouth to Camila’s forehead, then draws their mouths together.

“Welcome, _mi hermana_ ,” Satanico tells her when they part, stroking her hand down the side of her face.

 

 

 

 

 

**iii.**

Santanico kisses Richie when they stop for the night.

She teaches him to feed, lurking a man into an alleyway for him, and she watches him bite into his throat and he has his first real taste of blood, what life feels like when it fades under his mouth. He brushes his teeth the moment they book the motel room, scrubbing his teeth and spitting the remnants from his mouth so when she crawls on top of him and kisses him, all he tastes like is cheap mint toothpaste, tacky and flaking on his lips.

He shoves her back, rolls them around on the bed until he has her pinned against the mattress. She wants to laugh, stroke the side of his face and tell him _you’ve gotten stronger_ , but he grips her wrists tight and stares down at her like he might want to take her apart.

“Don’t,” he says, clipping the word off his teeth. “I came with you, but not for that. I don’t—” He sucks in a breath, too close to his humanity, making his words stutter on his tongue, “— _want_ you touching me.”

Santanico stares up at Richie as he breathes above her, heavy heaving breaths she wants to tell him he doesn’t need to take, but it wouldn’t help, not the way he sucks in the air deep. It does nothing to calm his trembling, his eyes open wide above hers, raw and wounded, and for once, she felt she could be sorry for what she had done.

“I had to,” she says. “You have to know I had to.”

He deflates and rolls away from her, releasing her again. “I know,” he says, and it comes out of his mouth like it tastes bitter, says it like it offers him no comfort.

Santanico curls against his back, touching though he asked her not to, not sure how to avoid it, needing to be close despite the lack of warmth between their two bodies. She strokes her fingers through his hair—clean now, strands loose and thick—and leans up to kiss the crown of his head.

“Thank you,” she whispers, finding the words strange and foreign on her tongue, like Spanish had felt once, and she feels clumsy and inept.

He snorts, breathes a laugh that could cut. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, you’re welcome.”

 

 

 

 

 

**iv.**

Seth tastes like tequila and vomit, and Santanico wants to shove him back and spit, get the sour taste from her mouth, but she yanks on his shirt, pulls him against her as she crushes her mouth down on his. The kiss burns, sears when his blunt teeth scrape across her lips, his fingers digging under her ribs and it makes her skin shift, hardened scales in its place.

He doesn’t stop when she expects him to—winds his tongue around the fangs that pop into his mouth and runs his fingers down ridges of her spine over her shirt until he gets his hand under it, spreading his palm out across her snakeskin and groans into her mouth.

“Do it,” he breathes, his heart skittering against her chest, his blood making the veins in his throat jump, turning it hot and smell enticing, caught at the back of her throat. “Bite me. Fucking do it.” His eyes hold hers, focused and hazy at once, a distance in his gaze that cautions her, but he doesn’t look away, not from her face or the gold of her eyes.

His neck is scarred, skin thick with raised white marks, knotty and not well-healed. She wants to ask him who he’d been letting tear at his jugular, how he kept avoiding death— _you must be running out of lives by now, Seth_ —but she tears through them instead, leaving her own mark.

Santanico shoves him back against the wall as soon as his blood runs over her tongue, hot and tasting of cinnamon, Richie’s face fluttering through her head, backwards through the years, the only thing imprinted on Seth’s soul. It makes her stop, yank her mouth up as he laughs, loud and ringing in her ears, an awful sound to haunt her as he collapses in the alleyway.

“I won’t be the killing blow, Seth,” she says, looking down at him as her scales recede—a pathetic crumpled heap sitting in sewage and his own vomit, bleeding from the neck. “Your brother is looking for you.”

He laughs harder, clutching his torso instead of his neck. “Finally cut him loose, huh? Now he’s looking for his castoff to keep him company.”

“He left.” Santanico bends down and gives him her hand. “Just like you.”

Seth stops, jaw snapping down on the sound, eyes dark and flickering between her offered hand and her eyes. He chooses instead to stand up on his own, struggling to his feet, but he finds his footing and stares at her with their eyes level.

She sighs and turns from him. “Pull yourself together. You’re a mess,” she tosses over her shoulder.

 

 

 

 

 

**v.**

Vanessa is easy to like with her sharp blue eyes and sharper tongue, slicing Seth to pieces with her words, spitting out _ungrateful_ and colliding it with _piece-of-shit_ , hissing at him when he tries to touch her, brushing off his aborted soothing hands. Santanico laughs as Seth glares at her out of the corner of her eye.

She joins her outside when Vanessa rushes out after, breathing in gulps of free air, then lighting a cigarette. Santanico watches her suck in deep, dark-rimmed eyes closing for a moment then opening, locking on her through the smoke. “You want one?” she offers, but Santanico shakes her head.

“Never picked up that habit.”

Vanessa lets out a shaky laugh. “Lucky you.”

They stand together in silence, watching the road cutting across the dusty fields across from them, West Texan flatlands seemingly endless on the horizon. The night is calm and cool, a crescent moon above their heads, stars blinking in the dark blue. Vanessa breathes with the steady rhythm of the breeze, in and out, smoke tangling in Santanico’s hair.

“Hey,” Vanessa says, dropping the cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with the toe of her boot. “Wanna blow them off for a while?” Vanessa drags the keys she must have stolen from Seth’s pocket and offers them to Santanico with her hand. “Just for a while. I’ve been in prison for _months_ and they deserve it.”

Santanico takes her hand and her offer because she knows what it’s like to be locked up then set free, that need to run wild into the open space. She locks their fingers together as they head towards the sleek black car Seth had bought—not stolen, but _purchased_ , with stolen money—and sliding into the passenger’s seat beside Vanessa in the driver’s seat.

 _A while_ turns into weeks, Seth and Richie trailing two steps behind, chasing them like this is a cat-and-mouse game rather than just a game, carefree and childish for a few impressionable moments in time that Santanico grasps at with both hands and holds onto as long as she can, before the real monsters catch up to her.

Vanessa takes her to a carnival, a wholesome middle-American, family-friendly carnival and Santanico laughs against her neck, linking their hands as she buys get cotton candy, the sugar sweet on her tongue. Vanessa wins her a too-large stuffed bear, playing around the riggings and knowing where to spot a con, aiming her fake gun and shooting true.

“I’ve never been on one of those,” Santanico says, stopping at the turning wheel that nearly reached the sky.

Vanessa looks at her, then at the ride. “The ferris wheel?” she asks, and Santanico nods. “Do you want to?”

Santanico grabs her hand and leads her to the line. There isn’t many people, the night coming to a slow end, so they arrive at the entrance without much of a wait. She drops the bear at the bottom, setting it by the operator’s chair as they make their way to rocking bench seat and sit down, bars coming over their laps.

It’s slow moving as the few stragglers are loaded into the free seats, but Santanico has to bite down on her fangs poking through her gums, feeling a warmth flooding through her body that makes her shudder and her skin tremble as she grips Vanessa’s hand tight.

“Not scared of heights, are you?” Vanessa asks, shifting closer, their thighs pressed together, knee to hip.

Santanico snorts. “I have wings.”

“ _Oh_.”

Vanessa quiets, bears the strength of Santanico’s grip on her hand and Santanico wants to apologize, but she likes the feeling of their palms pressed together, feeling the warmth of Vanessa’s hand in hers, the shape of the bones under her skin and muscle—it grounds her as the wheel turns and creaks, metal crying out harsh in her ears, inching closer to the sky.

Vanessa kisses her, turning her mouth to hers with a hand under her chin, sliding down her jaw when her lips press against Santanico’s before they reach the top, breathing into her mouth. Vanessa’s heart pounding in her throat, making her smell delicious and replacing the night air with her scent that coats the roof of Santanico’s mouth and makes her lurch forward, kissing her through the turns of the wheel as it speeds up.

 

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://richiesseth.tumblr.com)!


End file.
